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Getty's PST ART: Art & Science Collide Exhibition opens at Skirball Cultural Center

Los Angeles October 17th, 2024 to March 2nd, 2025

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DendroJudaeology: A Timeline of the Jewish People  

For the Getty Museum’s PST Show Art & Science Collide Initiative:
Ancient Wisdom for A Future Ecology: Trees, Time & Technology

At the Skirball Cultural Center in Los Angeles. 

Co-Exhibition with Tiffany Shlain & Ken Goldberg

Exhibition runs for 5 months Oct 17, 2024 to March 7th, 2025

Description of artwork:

Trees are integral to the Jewish tradition, from the Tree of Knowledge to the Tree of Life. Judaism celebrates a new year of the trees, which seems fitting, given that Jewish time, like a tree’s growth, is both circular and linear. This tree ring plays with these two forms of time to depict a particular selection of events in Jewish history.

DendroJudaeology 

Reclaimed poplar wood sculpture 

Referencing dendrochronology (the science of tree-ring dating) and archeology in its title, this unorthodox timeline of the Jewish people is an artistic interpretation by two American Jewish artists based on extensive research and consultation with scholars.  

62 inches in diameter by 3 inches

Jews and Trees: Intertwined Rings

From the “Tree of Life” song many of us sang at Sunday school (off-key, very fast, clap-clap-clap-clap), to the Tree of Knowledge, to Tu B’Shvat (a birthday celebration for trees), trees and Jews are intertwined.

3761 BCE Jewish timeline begins, based on the chronology in the Torah, on Elul 25 (a 

Monday) (3761 + 2024 = 5785).

 

3762 BCE A beginning: Story of Adam, Eve, and the Tree of Knowledge.

 

3500-1200 BCE Canaanites worship sacred goddess trees, asherim.

 

2831 BCE The Methuselah tree, one of the oldest living organisms still alive (now 

approximately 4855 years old), sprouts in the Inyo National Forest, CA. 

 

2000s BCE Noah begets Shem, from which we get “Semite.”

 

Shem begets Arpachshad who begets Selah who begets Eber, from which we get 

“Hebrew” (or not; it may instead come from the Egyptian “Habiru,” meaning “outsider” or “stranger”). 

 

c. 2000s-1500s  BCE  Story of Abraham (smashes idols and becomes the first Jew) and Sarah 

(mother of nations).

 

Hebrews are enslaved in Egypt.

 

c. 1400s-1200s BCE Story of Moses (encounters a burning bush and makes #%^& happen; leads 

Exodus out of slavery and receives the Ten Commandments at Mount Sinai).

 

Fourth Commandment establishes Shabbat, a day of rest. Seven-day week begins.

 

1208 BCE Pharaoh Merneptah’s victory monument makes first historical mention of Israel 

(whose name means “to wrestle with the divine,” from Jacob’s wrestling bout with an angel).

 

1200-1100ish BCE Deborah is the only female judge in the Hebrew Bible.

  

1000 BCE Story of David (slays Goliath, writes psalms, becomes king of Israel).

 

966 BCE King Solomon builds the First Temple in Jerusalem with Lebanon cedar and cypress trees.

 

960-587ish BCE According to Ethiopian Jewish traditions and histories, the Beta Israel community is founded.

 

930ish BCE United Monarchy of Israel splits into northern Kingdom of Israel and southern Kingdom of Judah.

 

722 BCE The northern Kingdom of Israel falls to the Assyrians.

 

597-587ish BCE Diaspora experience is documented in Psalm 137: “By the rivers of Babylon, 

there we sat down and wept, when we remembered Zion,” which will be

turned into a hit song by the ska band the Melodians 2000 years later.

 

587 BCE The Babylonians conquer the Kingdom of Judah, destroy its First 

Temple, and send Judaeans to Babylon, creating the Jewish Diaspora.

 

539-515 BCE Some Judaeans return and begin building the Second Temple.

 

500 BCE Yehudi, meaning Judaean, begins to replace “Israelite,” eventually becoming 

“Jew” in English.

 

430 BCE Greek historian Herodotus renames the territory of Israel “Palestine,” based on its 

name in Egyptian (“Peleset”) and Assyrian (“Palashtu”).

 

400s BCE-100s CE Elements of Torah (first five books of the Hebrew Bible: Genesis, Exodus, 

Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy; Prophets; and Writings) are canonized. “Israel” is mentioned 2,507 times.

 

167-160 BCE Jewish rebels called Maccabees revolt against Greek rule, commemorated in the 

holiday of Chanukah, Hanukkah, and all of its spellings. (Adam Sandler much later 

writes a song about it.)

 

100 BCE As told in the Talmud, the scholar Honi the Circle-maker plants a carob tree: “As 

my ancestors planted for me, so I plant for my descendants.”

 

c. 30 BCE-10 CE Rabbi Hillel teaches: "What is hateful to you, do not do to another. That is the 

whole Torah, all the rest is commentary. Go and learn it.” 

 

1  The most famous Jew in history is born.

`

66-74 First Jewish revolt against Romans rule ends at Masada after Romans massacre 

the Jews and destroy the Second Temple. 

 

200s A flourishing intellectual community of rabbinic sages in the land of Israel study and  

debate the matters that will become codified in the Mishnah, the first major written 

collection of Jewish oral teachings. These include matrilineal descent and Tu B’Shevat, the Jewish new year for trees.

 

250ish Rabbi Simlai defines a total of 613 mitzvot, or commandments. Many of these 

encourage welcoming strangers.  

 

  400-500ish  Compilation of the Talmud, the compendium of Jewish law and legend in 

spiraling commentary and questions.

 

415 Expulsion (Alexandria).

 

561  Expulsion (France).

 

610 Islam established. In the coming centuries, Jews will often thrive in Muslim 

countries.

 

613 Expulsion and conversion (Spain).

 

693  Jews enslaved (Toledo).

 

722 Judaism outlawed (Byzantium).

 

855  Expulsion (Italy).

 

900 The Hebrew calendar still in use today is established, using lunar months and solar 

years.

 

912-1066 “Golden Age” of Jewish life under Muslim rule in Spain.

 

960ish Kaifeng Jewish community established in China by Jews from India or Persia.

 

1000s “Ashkenazi” (from Ashkenaz, the medieval Hebrew term for Germany) Jewish 

community emerges in Europe, speaking Yiddish, a combination of Hebrew, 

Aramaic and Old High German. They will go on to develop different customs and laws than the Sephardim, Jews from the Iberian Peninsula, Middle East, and Africa.

 

1070s French rabbi Rashi teaches Torah to his daughters, from whom most Ashkenazi 

rabbinic dynasties will descend.

 

1095 Crusades begin in Europe. Anti-Jewish persecution and massacres follow.

 

1144 After William, a Norwich boy, dies under mysterious circumstances, Jews are 

blamed and the “blood libel” begins. The false accusation that Jews use the blood of Christian children in rituals will be repeated as justification for antisemitic atrocities for centuries.

 

1170-90 Rabbi and philosopher Maimonides writes 14-volume Mishneh Torah 

to make Jewish law more accessible, and The Guide for the Perplexed, a 

rationalist interpretation of Jewish theology.

 

1200s The Zohar, the central text of the Jewish Kabbalah mystical tradition, is 

compiled.

 

1267 Jews forced to wear horned hats in Vienna.

 

1400s Ladino, a language combining Spanish and Hebrew, develops among Jews of 

Iberia.

 

1478 The Spanish Inquisition begins. Jews known as conversos will convert to Christianity while continuing to practice Judaism secretly.

 

1492 Alhambra Decree expels all Jews from Spain. 

 

1500s Jews fleeing Spanish oppression establish Cochin community in India.

 

1506 Over 2000 converso Jews are killed in Lisbon.

 

1516 Ottoman Turks conquer Palestine, beginning 400-year rule.

 

1516 Venetian Jews are confined to a single area, the first “ghetto.”

 

1565 Joseph Caro publishes the Shulchan Arukh, the collection of Sephardic 

laws and customs that became so influential it was eventually adopted by 

Ashkenazi communities who added their own interpretations.

 

1600s The six-pointed star-shaped Shield of David is first used as the official seal of some 

Jewish communities.  

 

1654 First Jewish settlers arrive in what becomes the United States of America.

 

1691 Glückel of Hameln begins her diary, the earliest surviving memoir by a 

Yiddish-speaking woman.

1700s Hasidism arises in Poland, urging a more spiritual religious practice.

 

1770s-1880s   Haskalah, the intellectual movement known as the Jewish Enlightenment, arises in 

Central and Eastern Europe.

 

1780 Continental Congress delegates consider adopting Hebrew instead of 

English as the official American language.

 

1810 Reform Judaism develops in Germany. In response, Orthodox

Judaism is established.

 

1853 German Jewish immigrant Levi Strauss opens his dry goods store in San 

Francisco to supply Gold Rush miners, and founds the first company to 

manufacture jeans.

  

1868 Benjamin Disraeli becomes the first and only Jewish Prime Minister 

of the UK, known for the phrase, “Never take anything for granted” (including his Jewishness; he converted to Anglicanism at 12).

 

1880s “The Jewish Question" arises, as liberal advocates for equal citizenship debate 

antisemites on the matter of if and how Jews should fit into modern Europe.

 

1881    After pogroms in Eastern Europe, where many Jews are murdered, the first wave 

of immigration begins, bringing 25,000 Jews to Ottoman Palestine.

 

1883 American Jewish poet Emma Lazurus writes “Give me your tired, your poor, 

your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,” which is later inscribed on the Statue of Liberty.

 

1888 Manischewitz begins mass-producing matzah and the first iteration of Katz’s 

Deli opens on the Lower East Side.

 

1894 French Army captain Alfred Dreyfus, of Jewish descent, is falsely accused of giving 

military secrets to Germany.

 

1896 The Dreyfus affair prompts Theodore Herzl to call for a Jewish state in the land of 

Israel in his pamphlet Der Judenstaat, one month after Henrietta Szold does. Szold 

later founds Hadassah and the political party, Ihud, calling for a binational Arab/Jewish state. 

 

1903 Herzl presents a proposal to create a temporary Jewish homeland in Uganda, 

stunning the Sixth Zionist Congress and provoking heated debate.

 

1903-11 Russian authorities encourage rabid antisemitism and pogroms. Thousands 

of Jews are murdered in Odessa, Ukraine. 

 

1904-14 Second wave of immigration brings 35,000 Jews from Eastern Europe and Yemen to Ottoman Palestine.

 

1905 Albert Einstein publishes the Special Theory of Relativity (time is relative).

 

Freud publishes Jokes and Their Relationship to the Unconsciousness 

(humor is relative too).

 

1908 The Jewish National Fund, known for its iconic blue donation boxes, plants the first 

of over 240 million trees in the land of Israel. Planting a tree to mark an occasion or remember a loved one is a common Jewish practice.

 

1917 British foreign secretary declares UK’s support for a Jewish homeland in an 

announcement known as the Balfour Declaration.  

 

1920s First and second-generation Jewish immigrants open major film studios in LA.   

 

1920-1948 Following World War One, the Ottoman Empire collapses, and the territory of  

Palestine comes under British Mandate rule.

 

1922 Judith Kaplan, daughter of Reconstructionist movement founder Mordecai 

Kaplan, has the first bat mitzvah in the US.

 

1925 Gertrude Stein writes, “The Jews have produced only three originative geniuses: 

Christ, Spinoza, and myself.")

 

1926 Universities including Harvard, Yale, Columbia, Cornell, and Stanford begin limiting 

Jewish admission with quotas that will last for several decades.

 

1930s 60,000 Jews immigrate to Palestine under Haavara (Transfer) Agreement with 

Germany.

 

1935 Regina Jonas becomes first ordained female rabbi. She is later murdered 

at Auschwitz. 

 

1938 Kristallnacht, the "Night of Broken Glass," culminates a wave of antisemitic 

violence by the Nazis.  

 

 1940 Madagascar Plan, to deport European Jews to live under Nazi police rule in Africa, fails.

 

 1941-45 The Holocaust. The Shoah (Catastrophe). Six million Jews are murdered, two-thirds of Europe’s Jewish population. 

 

CHANGE FROM:

1942 Jewish actress and inventor Hedy Lamarr is granted a patent for her torpedo 

guidance system, which will later become the foundation for wi-fi.

 

CHANGE TO:
1942 To help war effort, Austrian-born Jewish film star Hedy Lamarr co-invents a 

“frequency hopping” method, which will later become the foundation for wi-fi.

 

 1945-47 British authorities severely limit immigration to Palestine, and most of the thousands of European Jewish immigrants are instead detained in Cyprus.

 

1945-49 Allied forces occupy Germany.

 

1947-49 UN votes to divide British Palestine into two states: one Arab, one Jewish. After much discussion, David Ben-Gurion announces that the Jewish state will be called Israel. Immediately after the state of Israel is established, five Arab countries declare war on it.  

 

The war, called The War of Independence by Israelis, and the Nakba (Catastrophe) by Palestinians and other Arabs, displaces 700,000 Palestinian Arabs. Over the next 30 years, 750,000 Jews are exiled from Muslim-majority countries; many come to Israel.

 

1948 140,000 Holocaust survivors immigrate from Europe to Israel.

 

1948 Brandeis University founded in response to rigid quotas limiting the number of 

Jewish students at many American universities.

 

1950 DNA is discovered, based partly on uncredited research by British Jewish scientist 

Rosalind Franklin.

 

1956-60 Marilyn Monroe and Sammy Davis Jr. convert to Judaism. 

 

1959 Jewish businesswoman Ruth Handler creates the Barbie doll. 

 

1963 Hannah Arendt coins the term “the banality of evil” in her book Eichmann in 

Jerusalem.

 

1965 Los Angeles Dodgers pitcher Sandy Koufax sits out Game 1 of the World 

Series to observe Yom Kippur.

 

1965  Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel marches with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. from 

Selma to Montgomery for voting rights, later saying, “I felt my feet were praying.” 

 

1965 Bob Dylan sings about the binding of Isaac in “Highway 61 Revisited.”

 

1967 Six-Day War between Israel and a coalition of Arab states (Egypt, Syria and 

Jordan) ends with Israel’s surprise victory and occupation of East Jerusalem, the 

West Bank, Gaza, Golan Heights, and Sinai. 

 

1968 Spanish Edict of Expulsion is formally revoked, five centuries after it was instituted.

 

1960s-70s Leaders of second-wave feminism in the US include Betty Friedan, Gloria 

Steinem, and Bella Abzug, who says, “Women will change the nature of power 

rather than power changing the nature of women.”

 

1969 Prime Minister Golda Meir becomes the first female head of state in the Middle 

East and fourth in the world.

 

1970 Judy Blume publishes Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret.

 

1971 Fiddler on the Roof directed by Norman Jewison (who is surprisingly not Jewish) is 

the highest grossing film of the year.

 

1972 Palestinian terrorists murder 11 Israeli Olympic athletes in Munich.

 

1973 Egypt and Syria attack on Yom Kippur; Israel ends up with control of more of 

the Golan. Leonard Cohen writes “Who by Fire” after visiting Israel to perform for 

soldiers.

 

1973 US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger reportedly tells Golda Meir he is an 

American first, Secretary of State second, and a Jew third. Meir reportedly replies, 

“In Israel, we read from right to left.”

 

1978 Israel and Egypt reach a peace treaty through the Camp David Accords.  

 

1979-2006 Eighty percent of Iran’s Jewish population flees following Islamic revolution, 

mostly to America.

 

1981 Mel Brooks releases History of the World, Part I.

 

1982 Israel withdraws from Sinai, returning it to Egypt.

 

1983 Barbra Streisand releasesYentl.

 

1987-93 First Intifada.

 

1984 Operation Moses rescues 8,000 Ethiopian Jews, bringing them to Israel. Seven 

years later, Operation Solomon brings over 14,000 more in 36 hours, including two babies born in-flight.

 

1987 Dirty Dancing premieres. (“Nobody puts baby in a corner.”)

 

1989 Seinfeld premieres.

 

1993 Ruth Bader Ginsburg appointed to Supreme Court. 

 

1993-94 Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and PLO leader Yasser Arafat shake hands on the 

White House lawn after signing the Oslo I Accord. Palestinian Authority 

established to administer partial rule in the West Bank and, later, Gaza.

 

1995 Rabin is assassinated by a Jewish extremist and peace process is derailed. 

 

1998         Two Jews co-found Google, inventing a new way to ask questions.

 

1999 In the US, demand for bagels exceeds that of doughnuts.  

 

2000 Camp David Summit peace negotiations fail. Second intifada begins.

 

2000 Joe Lieberman becomes first Jewish candidate to appear on a major party’s 

presidential ticket.

 

2002 Dr. Ruth Westheimer says, “In Judaism, sex is not a sin but a mitzvah.” (And on 

Shabbat, it’s a double mitzvah.)

 

2005 Israel withdraws from Gaza. 

 

2006 Terrorist group Hamas, which calls for the eradication of Israel in its   

charter, wins a majority of seats on Palestinian Legislative Council. As a result, 

US cuts off aid to Palestinians.

 

2007 After a brief civil war, Hamas ousts Fatah political party and takes over Gaza. 

Egypt and Israel begin to impose restrictions on Gaza.

 

            2008 The Jewish National Fund announces its parks and forests will recognize the 

names of Arab villages formerly located on those sites.

 

2009 Alysa Stanton becomes the first Black American woman rabbi.

 

2019 Ukraine elects Jewish comedian Volodymyr Zelensky as President.   

 

2019 American comedian and Eritrean Jew Tiffany Haddish celebrates her “Black 

Mitzvah.”

 

2019 Former UK Chief Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks advises: “Live. Give. 

Forgive. They are by far the most important things in life.”

 

2020 Abraham Accords are signed, normalizing relations between Israel, the United 

Arab Emirates, and Bahrain.

 

2023 Hundreds of thousands of Israelis take to the streets to protest 

what many considered an attempted judicial coup by Prime Minister Benjamin 

Netanyahu.

 

Oct 7, 2023 Hamas attacks Israel, killing 1074 people, taking 240 hostages, with evidence of

rape and atrocities. 

 

Israel declares war on Hamas. In the fierce conflict, tens of thousands of Hamas 

terrorists and Gazan civilians are killed in bomb strikes. A majority of civilians in Gaza are displaced.   

 

The conflict and its repercussions continue to unfold…

 

Antisemitism surges worldwide. 

 

Today Jewish descendants of the ancient Israelites now number 15.7 million 

worldwide. They are only 0.2% of the world population—and only one quarter of     the Jewish population before the Holocaust.

 

Approximately half live in Israel. They are a diverse population; half have origins in the Middle East, Africa, Asia and Latin America. 21% of Israeli citizens are Palestinian Arabs, including Christians and Druze.

 

The US has the second largest population of Jews. 

 

American Jews are racially and ethnically diverse and hold many different views. Most feel Israel is central to Jewish identity, some don’t, and many wrestle with this question.

 

Judaism is a culture, an ethnicity, and a religion. Some Jews identify as agnostics or atheists.

 

Jewishness is a sensibility, an ethical framework, a tribe, a sense of humor, a shared history. If you ask two Jews what it means to be Jewish, you will get three opinions . . . maybe more.   

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